DIBELS Practice Activities

About this resource

Practice pages for the four short reading tasks your kindergarten to second grade students meet on early-reading screenings: naming letters, saying the sounds in a word, reading made-up words and reading a short story aloud. Three forms of each task, a clean page for the child and a record page for you, so a child can try the format before it counts.

WHAT IS INCLUDED - 38 pages: 12 student practice pages, 6 teacher record pages, a star chart for the child, a score tracker, a group sheet, four graphs, a family note, a family guide, a phrase bank, a filled-in example and a binder set

LETTER NAMES (4 pages)

• 3 student pages (Forms A, B, C): 90 letters a form, ten across and nine down, in a beginning-reader font. Every form has all 26 capitals and all 26 small letters, and no letter sits next to the same letter across or down.
• 1 teacher record page with all three forms on one page, to slash each letter said wrong and count the letters named right.

SOUND BOXES (4 pages)

• 3 student pages (Forms A, B, C): 10 rows of boxes a form, one box for each sound in the word you say. No pictures and no printed words on the child's page, so the child listens.
• 1 teacher record page: the 10 words of each form with their sounds written out (31 sounds a form) and a place to count the sounds said right.

PRETEND WORDS (4 pages)

• 3 student pages (Forms A, B, C): 30 made-up words a form, 6 that start with a vowel (2 sounds) and 24 that start with a consonant (3 sounds), short vowels only. 90 different pretend words across the three forms, none repeated.
• 1 teacher record page: all 90 words, 84 sounds a form, places to count sounds right and words read whole.

SHORT STORIES (6 pages)

• 3 student pages: "The Red Kite," "The Lost Hat" and "A Rainy Day," each 10 lines and 55 words, written for this file.
• 3 teacher record pages, one for each story: a running word count at the end of every line, a mark column, time, words tried, errors, words correct and room to write what the child said happened.

RECORD, TRACK AND SHARE (9 pages)

• Giving Each Practice Task (page 5): what to say, what the child does and what you mark for each task, with blank lines for your school's own time allowed and stopping rule.
• One Student's Score Tracker: four blocks (letters, sound boxes, pretend words, stories), four rounds each.
• Group Score Sheet: 14 children on one page.
• Four Practice Graphs: ten rounds on each graph, scaled to the file's own numbers (90 letters, 10 words, 30 whole words, 55 words).
• My Practice Stars: a student page where the child colors one star for each time practiced, 4 rows of 10 stars.
• Family Note (This Week's Practice) and Practice at Home, a family guide with four five-minute games in plain words.
• Progress Note Phrase Bank: 20 sentence starters in 5 groups, each ending in a blank for what the tracker shows.
• A Filled-In Tracker: an invented child over four rounds, every number in one table and the progress note built from it.
• Binder Cover and Dividers: a cover plus 5 divider tabs to print, cut along the dashed lines and file.

Every Student Page

A My name line, one short instruction with a picture, big items, and nothing written for an adult. Your marks, the words, their sounds and the counts are on the teacher pages.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: open it in a PDF reader, click a line or a cell on the teacher pages, type, and save a copy for each child. The child's pages print. It works offline with no account. It is not a Google Slides, Google Docs or PowerPoint file, and it does not calculate or score anything for you.

It is practice, not an assessment. There are no norms, no benchmark goals, no cut scores and no risk levels anywhere in this file, and it does not tell you what a score means. How long to wait, when to stop and how your school scores the real assessment are your school's decisions, so those get a blank line. Every item is our own: no test item, word list or passage from any assessment is copied. Each form of a task has the same number of items; that does not make the forms equally hard, so compare a child with the same child over time.

This resource is not affiliated with or endorsed by the DIBELS authors, the University of Oregon, or any DIBELS publisher or data system. DIBELS is an assessment from the University of Oregon; this file is practice in the same shape for children who have not seen that format.

Who This Is For

Kindergarten, first and second grade teachers, special education teachers, reading interventionists and paraprofessionals who want children to be comfortable with the format before it counts, and families who want a five-minute game at home.